A brief history of my quest

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello, all. After having written a bit on the introdutory post, I thought I should move on to something more specific.

As I mentioned there, I’m a natural dreamer, but not a lucid one. I love sleeping (and dreaming), but I’ve had a kind of insomnia (same as my mother) since forever: it takes me up to 2 or 3 hours to get to sleep. Also, instead of SP, I have “sleep twich” (at least when I’m conscious during that stage). I can try to ignore it (for meditation or WILD), but at some point the itch is so bad I start twitching involuntarily like a dog having a nightmare. Once asleep, however, my sleep is long, pleasant, dreamy, refreshing, etc.

My HI is usually very vivid and pleasant, but attempting lucidity usually breaks it easily.

Since my childhood, I’ve had quite some moments of realizing, “hey, I’m dreaming!”, but very few times it leads to any control of the dream, or of my own intentions. I did it a few times as a child, and at around 14-15 (I am 26 now) I heard of the term “lucid dream” and invested a bit on it. To this day, successes in stabilizing lucidity have been very few (and I always read it takes some months…).

On the other hand, as I mentioned, I’m a natural dreamer. My dreams have always been long, vivid, pleasant. And, on top of that, I almost always am able to, for instance, fly. It’s like it’s a skill I have when dreaming regardless of lucidity. It even makes flying (and seeing thru eyelids) TERRIBLE RCs for me. It’s like “Oh, I can fly, and no one else around can? Big deal, I’ve always done that. Move on.” And no lucidity comes from that. MILD is usually not very effective, too. I’ve had memorized the goal of “when I realize I’m dreaming, I’ll go back to my bedroom and cross the doorway that’s going to be right above and behind my bed” for quite some time, but I just dont remember it.

I’ve had at least two spontaneous OBEs, too; last one I remember at around age 16. And then, I’ve tried those intentionally during more than half my life, too, with no success. I am able to achieve a very strong (and comfortable) tingling effect on my whole body, I can maintain that for long, but not go any further.

Currently, I’m trying Binaurals. As most things I’ve tried, it gets me into a very relaxed state, tingling and all, but takes me not much further.

Finally (and this is a lot longer than I expected!), last night, using LD-intended binaural beats, I mentally went down Lovecraft’s 770-step-stairway into the dreamlands. I thought I’d either lose lucidity or start twitching midway, but to my surprise, went down the whole way. Consciously. I even went slowly, taking my time, noticing how it changed during the way down (my subconscions played along well), but when I got deep down I was still awake.

I think anything like WILD is not for me. But then, during dreams, I have a trouble getting lucid too because I’m so damn familiar with all the incongruencies. And… that’s it. Thanks for reading! I’ll read some of your experiences around. If any of you have a similar background to mine and for over it, please leave your opinion!

2

Hey monstah! I’m a bit similar to you… Flying is always one of the most natural things for me to do in a dream, whether lucid or not. I keep telling myself I need to start asking why I’m doing something rather than necessarily whether I’m dreaming or not, because I have a lot of FLDs, and always have. I also always took at least a half hour most nights to fall asleep when I was younger, if not an hour. I’ve never had insomnia, per se, but it is hard for me to quiet my head. As of late, I’ve been using this technique when I go to sleep.

I know that the purpose of the technique is more for being able to WILD more quickly, but it helps me fall asleep at the beginning of the night as well. One night I was recording my sleep breathing, and found that I was asleep within ten minutes. I can fall asleep quickly in most places except for my bed. (Should really stop using my laptop in bed…) However, when I use SDR, it doesn’t feel like I sometimes take forever to fall asleep, even if I’d woken up only 14 hours before. I’ve also heard of it helping others who take a long time to fall asleep. ^^

(Okay, maybe I’m falling asleep faster lately partly because I’m tired from work, but I really need around ten hours of sleep. Even then, I’m yawning throughout the day. Frustrating… and it’s not the fault of caffeine. Maybe I should be looking at my diet to see if there’s too much sugar in it, but even so, I don’t think so…)

3

That sounds wise! Gets in the mood of the Lucidity Checks someone was talking about in another post, as opposed to Reality Checks.

4

Awareness Check, as Tggtt calls them? Yeah, I guess it would be similar. I either try to RC when I remember or to ask myself why I’m doing what I’m doing and whether it’s consistent with waking life or dream life. I feel I should be doing more of the latter though.